


Do Not Touch the Artwork

by anonymous_huxely



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Almost Kiss, Arthur Morgan's Journal, Bonding, Camping, Denial of Feelings, Drawing, F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship, High Honor Arthur Morgan, Hurt/Comfort, I need my angst glasses because I can't tell if it is..., Mutual Pining, One Shot, Romance, Slow Burn, Stargazing, Watching Someone Sleep, tending an injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-05-15 15:26:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19298512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_huxely/pseuds/anonymous_huxely
Summary: Arthur draws you during a stolen moment–one in which he reflects on the feelings he keeps hidden inside in regards to you.





	Do Not Touch the Artwork

**Author's Note:**

> This fic can also be found on my tumblr, here: https://muse-of-nightmares.tumblr.com/post/186022507968/do-not-touch-the-artwork
> 
> If you have a request for a one-shot, you may send it to my tumblr inbox : https://muse-of-nightmares.tumblr.com/

* * *

 

* * *

He often woke when the world did.

At the hour in which dreams fade and the cock crows, when the tide of easterly light sweeps away the stars with obligation, Arthur would blink at the receding border of night and allow himself to sit still; a silent witness to each dawn as it was destined to be.

He spent a thousand sunrises this way—pausing with his feet reluctant to touch the cool, damp Earth, and it became a cherished time, one of deep reflection. The brew of the sky offered a clarity for rumination, providing the moments in which he would think to himself about the horizon—the path his life had taken to see a new one each day, and, subliminally, if he would live to see the next.

This tradition never grew old, for no two sunrises were the same. Most days, the sun’s far arrival was a hopeful blush into the dark blue, while others were portent with shades of red that bled into the low, conspiring clouds. Nevertheless, his keen artist’s eyes would gratefully follow the lines of the landscape—the grasses jeweled with dew, drinking the sun’s honey, and the shafts of sunlight striking through the trees—all the while recognizing that the colors beyond were not a wonder to be captured by pencil.  

On this day, as the dark came away, a rare and dreamlike shade welcomed him in his matutinal contemplation. A color he was patient for, one that fell his eyes shut in its presence—lightening to a pale in the space of that blink.

The sky was violet.

No dreadful red, no storms to come. Violet, to him, symbolized his deepest dreams of peace. Brief and surreal, yet lingering. Mornings of this color foretold brighter days.

Arthur sits up from his cot, soothing the aches in his neck as the yolk of the sun slides up from the horizon. The wind rises with the gold, rustling the gilded treetops, and within their emerald branches the songbirds awaken and impart their sweet music above to encourage the creatures below.

His consciousness blearily begins to return to him, reminders of his duties creeping back in. The quiet of his mind wanes and he gives one last lingering glance to the fire in the sky as it spreads across the landscape, glowing like the ends of his cigarette, orange and burning.

With a departing flick, he affixes his hat, withdrawing from the shade of his canopy with the comforting weight of his satchel and revolvers beside him.

The girls smile up at Arthur, soap suds caking their arms as they vigorously scrub at the laundry in the wash buckets and their brows sheened with sweat as they work under the sun’s glare. He tips his hat as they bid him good morning, and he continues to exchange polite greetings to the familiar faces that pass him by as he makes his way to the communal coffee percolator.

A flock of geese flies low through the early morning mist that still clings to the water of Flat Iron Lake. Hosea and Dutch stand before the placid surface, hands clasped behind their backs as they discuss something amongst themselves. The dull, rhythmic scrape of Charles’ sharpening his hunting knife drowns out their voices, and his gaze meanders around the perimeter of the camp. Between the cheerful whistles and the curls of wood smoke floating through the air, all is as it should be—the sun beaming bright. However, despite the passing faces, and the flick and swing of horsetails as they grazed, a noticeable absence strikes him and leaves his daily picture incomplete.  

It was unlike you.

Most mornings he would listen for the papery scrape of onion skins across a cutting board and find you at Pearson's wagon, knife in hand dicing vegetables for the afternoon stew with precision. With a glance towards the water's edge, he finds the sunlit flaps of your tent undrawn, and his unease abates. He smiles to himself easily as he fixes a cup of coffee, pouring another to bring to you.

Chickens cluck past him as they squabble over scatterings of barley in the trampled grass. For the time being, he knows that this peace is temporary, that the day ahead was sure to be filled with hard riding and gun smoke that would ultimately leave him exhausted. The thought makes him grateful for the bitterness of the brew he swallows. Your presence alongside him would alleviate his doubts about the robbery tip you were both set to investigate—supposedly at first light. And so, he savors the calm of morning during the short walk to your tent; the untouched halcyon surrounding him instilled by the water with its gentle laps against the shore and the ribbit of frogs that dwell along it.

He inevitably reaches the canvas entrance, his eyes cast down to the clover grasses while he collects himself. As he steps inside, the familiarity of the outside world disappears and he is forgetful of all as the flaps close behind him.

The sound of fabric sliding against itself lures his eyes to the waves of your sheets and quilts. Feet glide along legs and he stills as his gaze and the sunlight falls upon the rest of you.

You were dreaming—and perhaps he is, too. Deep in a pleasant sleep, you lay in a nightgown of a feather-white, the gauzy sleeves unconsciously pulled down your shoulders to escape the nascent summer heat. The laces over your collarbone had loosened, and the first instinct he has is to avert his widened gaze at the realization that this is more of your skin than he has any privilege to see.

Arthur was no stranger to your sleeping form. Between the frequency of long journeys and the unavoidable togetherness that followed, the companionship he formed with you was organic; as natural and intrinsic together as the bond between a wolf and the moon.

However, he had another steadfast companion in his life. Uncertainty. The lingering presence of it was one of the reasons why he stole moments for himself to draw what he saw humbly. A desire dwelled within him whenever he observed the natural world around him. One to forget. To appreciate what might be taken for granted. His journal became his sacred place to find his words and to pen the hard truth of present circumstance—a circumstance that left no room for delusions, especially amorous ones. The reflective act highlighted the importance of trust and loyalty, why it mattered most to him in this life, and why family was what he fought for.

The family he surrounded himself with was bonded by something stronger and less accidental than blood—by choice. A choice not influenced by obligation, but by promise and principle. Those of which were no mild oaths to him.

Watching over another sleep—a time when one is most vulnerable—was different when all that existed between Arthur and you was that treasured trust and loyalty. He never anticipated the roots of your bond burgeoning as deep as it has, into something unspeakable, unthinkable—into a feeling far from easy friendship, and laying further in his subconscious than a dream. A dream that a man like Arthur, living the life that he led, was not meant to possess. The sight of you in such a deep sleep unearths a familiar pit of dread over something he thought he long accepted about himself.

Frozen in step, a deliberate breath fills his chest as he considers how awkward it would be to wake you in this state. He should leave. Find an excuse to busy himself with or—

He allows himself to look at you, and he softens at the sight. The honest and innocent nature of your face allays his hesitation into a longing to capture it.

Your honest values he appreciated daily, but he was only reminded of your innocence in quiet, untouchable moments like this one. Because, despite you good intentions and sweet nature, bad luck swept you into this life—as it did to many others, including himself. All of you survived under an irrevocable circumstance, one filled with gambles. You only had the power to change the way you played the hand, not the cards you were dealt. And in the swift game of chance, innocence lost in a cold roll of dice.

Luck seldom favored Arthur. Although, it was the bad kind that lead your paths to cross in the first place. A part of him is thankful for that.

With a resolved twitch in his fingers, he wanders away from this uncharted territory and decides to indulge you in a few more minutes of rest.

Careful not to disturb you, he eases himself onto the crate across from your cot and retrieves the worn leather journal from his satchel. The pages flutter past his thumb, a blur of cursive and penciled drawings—some of you, tucked safe in hidden corners—until his sketches of rare flowers flash by and he pauses.

The petal soft appearance of your eyelids resembles the graceful and soundless bloom of an orchid on the page before him. Deciding that this is where the image of you belongs, he smooths the parchment anew.

He rolls his sleeves past faded scars and a balmy breeze enters the enclosed space, rustling the dark hairs on his forearms. A perfect peace befalls in its wake, whistling through the trees and flapping the laundry on the line outside. Set adrift, he inhales the bliss deeply to fill his lungs, clearing his head before he deems himself ready to begin.

His steadied hand is mindful not to wrinkle the paper as he studies his subject in earnest. His thoughts, the outer dissonance of dishes and pots clattering, and Miss Grimshaw’s subsequent scolding—it all vanishes as he seeks the blessed stillness of his mind. The point of graphite meets the cream page, and the elegance that follows is a contradiction to the weathered hand that guides it.

The drawing begins as all drawings must: with thin, light lines that build off of one another. Through quick glances and sharp attention, the map of your frame comes into existence, and the lines of your proportions follow. It is unrefined at first, only a basic outline, a fact in which he is unconcerned. The time for details would come when he earned them, for the pursuit of art took practice and patience with one’s self, he learned.

The essential shape of you, the curves, the contours, are precisely measured with a hand driven by his concentrated gaze, and the further he draws, the farther he falls into the deeply thoughtful nature of himself he likes to be alone with.

He often found that sacred place when he drew you.

The first time it was a thoughtless sketch; an afterthought rippling in his memory like the creek water beneath your toes on that blistering afternoon. 

He remembers it slowly; the noonday smell, the vibrant green stretches of grass spotted with yellow flowers, how the doves had departed from their perch on the power lines as you both rode past. That day had been filled with the radiant sunshine of spring. Butterfly wings had fluttered in the meadows as you crossed through vast fields and wildflowers, riding against the wind carried down from a cloudless sky wheeling with vultures. 

The tall grasses had moved gently in the breeze and insects chittered loudly from the wavering stalks. As your steady hoof beats coincided, a trail of dust rose in his wake as you coasted through the Lemoyne countryside together.

His hands sweated into the leather of the reins and he eased up when the sun rose high, the dirt beginning to settle as you slowed your mare to a trot alongside him. She whickered and tossed her head, and you hunched over to console her with reassuring pats and murmurs.  

“There looks to be a forest up there, might be a good place to stop and rest the horses for a while.” His announcement broke the comfortable silence between you.

“I had the same idea.” You replied, relief in your tone as you wiped your brow and glanced in the direction where he pointed. He shook his arms loose and followed behind you, rolling his neck and flexing his hand.

Hooves clomped softly in the dirt as you veered off the path and headed into the luxurious shade. The heavy, drooping branches of sumac brushed over your shoulder blades and you ducked low in your saddle, a sight that bemused him as he trampled through the undergrowth behind you.

Arthur remembered overhearing you talking with Kieran one night out by the hitching posts at Horseshoe Overlook. It was after dinner, and the horses toed the crabgrass whilst the moths fluttered around the buttery glow of the lanterns, looking for a place to settle. 

You stood beneath the looming pines, fishing a shawl out from your saddlebag when Kieran had come up beside you and nervously asked if your saddle needed polishing. With a kind smile, you accepted his offer, and sat beside him on a log as he worked. Arthur eyed him with distrust from the poker table and lingered on you with a budding curiosity, taking a sip of his beer as a conversation began to flow between the two of you. 

Kieran asked you about your horse beneath his hat; a comfortable question for him. You leisurely recalled a time when you were desperate, on the run, and in need of something fast to take you far away when you came across a herd of wild horses roaming through the plains of Dakota. Singling her out and taming her was no easy feat, and when you did, you had named her Nisha. When Kieran asked for the meaning behind her name, you told him it came from an ancient holy language in India, and that it meant “night”. 

Arthur supposed it was as good a name as any for a black horse. Although, as time passed, he came to admire your choice more for its uniqueness, and, for a perplexing, unnamable reason, he wished he had been the one to ask you about it first instead of learning by eavesdropping.

Deeper within, a gurgling stream wound throughout the woods. With a click of your tongue you led your faithful mustang to its mossy edge on foot. The water ran pure as quartz, and the mica shimmer of the rocks beneath glinted iridescently, silver and twinkling like starlight in the sun. The horses dipped their heads to drink.

“Thank you for bringing me along with you today. I—“You had passed a brush over Nisha’s oil black coat, pausing your grooming to consider him and the day you spent together. “It was nice to get out for a bit.” You finished shyly, attention fixated on removing a leaf from your horse’s mane. He straightened from refilling his canteen and turned back to you.

“’Course.” He glanced at the prize pelts rolled up behind your sun-bleached saddlebags and gestured to them with his thumb. “You can come along anytime if you keep catching game like that. I ain’t one much for tracking but you sure have a knack for it.” They  _would_  fetch a fair price. A surprised hint of pride lightened his voice and your eyes lifted to find his encouraging smile.

“I appreciate that, Arthur. I think I’ll take you up on that offer sometime.”

With a nod, he took his distance to recline against a tree, respecting your privacy as you settled on a rock to tug off your shoes and dip your bare feet in the creek. 

Overhead, the sunlight threaded its warmth through the foliage, dappling your skin with the shadows of leaves. Beneath the brim of his hat, he safely marveled at how they drifted over you darkly in the sway of the wind, his hands slowing as he cleaned the brass barrel of his hunting rifle.

With a book in your lap and an apple poised in hand, the hour passed idyllically, and you hummed to yourself as you admired the wild roses that grew along the embankment. The bristled branches stretched over the water, offering their beautiful dark magenta petals to the ripples, where diamonds of droplets beaded the blooms. Little yellow bees buzzed over them.

He decided he liked the sound of your voice, for you sang a song far sweeter than the water’s.

With mesmeric motions, you swilled your feet in the cool brook, mindlessly soaking the cuffed hems of your pants. And when you closed your eyes against the incoming wind, a grateful smile graced your face and Arthur looked away.

Later that night by his lantern’s light, a rigid hand recollected the image of you in the mirror of the water. He tried to capture the bliss on your face and the harmony of the Earth beside and above you, but his sketch was uncharacteristically restrained, as if reluctant to focus, lest he awaken the softer, slumbering animal of his body. Regardless of his ingrained abnegation, a dim flame flickered within thereafter.

Something began to change in him. Something ineffable that ignored the hard lessons he learned and tempered his reluctance to let it lay forgotten as he drew you presently. Light scratching sounds fill the quiet space of your tent as he devotes his focus absolutely, practicing the diligence he savors the occasion for.

The coffee beside him grows colder as the silver pocket watch on your side table ticks by; the only reminders of the passage of time.

Memories and the fondness they collected guide his hand as he begins to add shading to strengthen the realism. The image of you massaging your feet in the water that day lays in the back of his mind as he darkens the arch of your foot and suggests the subtlety of your ankles amidst the sheets.

With a delicate stroke, he follows the smooth curve of your calf before it disappears beneath your skirt.

It was an acquired skill to apply varying pressure to create a shadowed effect, especially in the folds of your clothing as he pronounces the edges of your knees through the material. He thinks on how your knees are a place often caked with dirt, and also a place you tapped nervously when crouched beside him with your rifle. In a brief exchange, your jittery fingers would brush over his whenever he passed his binoculars to you. The passage was smooth and brief, like the feather fletching of an arrow before it releases.

Your hands are relaxed, one against the cotton of your pillow and the other draped lazily over your waist. While he cannot capture their delicate warmth or the assurance they lent, he depicts their gentleness, the nimble curl of your fingers and the poetic spacing between them, and he faintly pencils the crescent tips of your nails. He uses the sides of the graphite instead of the tip to create a lighter, more discrete effect.

The folds and creases of your underdress congregate around the curves of your hips and bring an unbidden tightness to his throat. Still, he pursues the soft shapes of you and the curvature of your form honestly.

Although, it is the lines of your arm, the bend of your elbow, the gentle swoop of your collarbone and the following curve of your shoulder that tarries his hand and awakens a deep wellspring of feeling within him. These parts of you stir a more intimate significance within him as he remembers that night.

One where the world’s existence and his responsibilities faded as you slept beside him, and the one in which he first began to lie to himself.

* * *

“ _Hold still_.”

“It’s just a scratch.”

“It’s a _bite._ At least let me look at it. _”_

With a relenting sigh, he settled back against a driftwood log and you had knelt beside him in the firelight. Aside from the incense of burning wood, the less fond but equally familiar tang of blood filled his nose and sharpened the twilight air.

The blood was his.

The tattered blue fabric of his sleeve came away wet and scarlet as he rolled it up for you, and the sight it unveiled firmed your mouth into a worried line.

Several rings of angry bite marks had scored his arm, and your curious, gentle hands held his wrist in a light hold as you examined the wounds while you sat beside him on the lakeside. Your fire-warmed fingertips traced over his skin, drifting over where his pulse thrummed and lulling his eyes to a close at the residual warmth that followed their dance.

“They don’t look too deep, but they should still be disinfected.” You had concluded after a few moments of study, your tone quieted by concentration. Arthur began to protest, but his words caught in his throat at how the color of your eyes softened with concern before they trailed away with your voice. It became clear to him that you needed something to do in order to get your mind off of what happened. So, he swallowed what he was about to say and agreed to let you get started on dinner and dress his injury.

The cry of coyotes bid the night to fall as they howled in the far off mountains, the pale pink of the sky deepening into rose and further on into a lasting crimson. As the sun slowly sank behind the snow-capped peaks, the teal glass of the lake was painted with the colors of a sanguine sunset, rippling and bleeding with the warmth left by the rays of fading sunlight.   

Laps of water soothed the pebble shore and the summer wind had sang through the susurrus of cattails whispering along its edge. While he often drank in nature's tranquil reward for a long day, Arthur's eyes shifted to you, to your clothes—spattered grimly with wolf's blood and torn by claws and teeth, to the blank expression on your face as you basted the meat roasting on the spit over the fire.

You absently added salt to a pot of water set on the iron grill to boil.

It worried him; the slight tremble in your hands before you tucked them under your arms, the sightless look in your eyes as you stared out at nothing, thinking.

You were far, far away from him and this place.

The water pot began to bubble and your gaze cleared. Arthur stayed quiet, lost for the consoling words you needed to hear. He let the crackle of wood devour the absence of conversation.

You returned to him with the pot of cooling water, setting down a roll of gauze on the log behind him while keeping a bundle of clean cloths in your lap. Wordlessly, he held his arm out for you again and you angled it diagonally towards the ground. A tin cup scratched against the bottom of the pan as you dipped it inside.

While he had been in this position as your patient before, you had never been so quiet. You liked to talk while you worked. He tried to think of what he should say, what would take your mind off of everything, but he came up empty and frustrated with himself.

A strange, plaintive call echoed across the water, and another answered it. His curiosity spoke for him.

“You know,” he looked out to the edge of the lake, where the willow trees practiced their art of weeping and the night shadows crept out unseen like the ghosts of the land. “I always wondered what kind of bird makes those sounds.”

At the curve of your lips, he realized with no small amount of relief that he said the right thing, for your slight smile was one of fond remembrance.

“Those are loons. There’s a pair out there.”

Bloody water soaked the rocks as you began to irrigate his wounds, the water stinging about as pleasantly as soap in the eye as you poured the cup. He tensed and flexed his hand as you went on.

“There was a lake near where I grew up. It was one of my favorite places to go, actually.” With your head bowed and your eyes narrowed in concentration, you sensed his discomfort and asked if he was alright or if he needed anything.

“No, I’m fine. Go on.” He mumbled softly beneath your careful touch.

Shaking your head, you laughed through your nose. “More whiskey for me then.” 

He pointedly stared into the sapphire heart of the fire as your breath fanned over his skin and you shifted imperceptibly closer, your knees brushing his thigh.  

“Anyways.” You cleared your throat and bowed your head once more. “In the summertime, when the day was at its end and the lake water went absolutely still, you would hear them. I used to sit out on the porch and listen while I watched the sun go down and the bats come out. No other time was more peaceful to me.”  

When the water began to run clear, you gingerly dabbed the violent edges of the teeth marks with a cloth. Katydids and crickets chattered in the lulls between your pauses and the sky began to darken in earnest. 

He eagerly listened, drawn to the happiness recalling a simpler past brought you. More than that, he cherished you sharing this story with him. This was the facet of you that drew him in intractably and seized his heart the most.

The part of you that had so much to say, and no one to say it to.

“One day, I was at the general store and I picked up a field guide. The shopkeeper told me it was his mother’s, a gift from her father after they spent a summer camping together in the Adirondacks. I thought that explained why the pages smelled so wonderful, like oak trees and memories. But from it, I learned that a pair of loons mate for life, and every day before they can return to their nest, they have to find each other again. That’s what that sound is. A beacon to one another. I began to think of it as a call to a lost love,” You mused as you wrapped his forearm in gauze. “And I realized that the reason why it resonated with me so deeply was because it echoes with a fear we all share.”

His surroundings dissipated until all that was left were your words. Each syllable ensnared him, hooked him on their reminiscent edges precariously, and left his complete attention clinging to you. They carried him away from his great reluctance, left him helpless with longing, for he profoundly understood the nostalgia that laced your dulcet voice—regardless if it was for a foreign place to him.

“And what’s that?” He genuinely wondered aloud as he watched the firelight flicker over your face. Thoughtlessly, he leaned into the lovely shadows they cast. Your eyes lifted at his intimate tone, and the golden moment in which they met his open gaze and considered the diminishing distance between, something changed. Irrevocably. 

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. The same way as when he was caught in a thunderstorm and sensed the imminent crackle of lightning in the air.

Once more, that poignant, lonesome wail rung throughout a land that grew cold and dark beneath the mountains’ shadows, revealing the answer before you did.

“The fear of being alone.”

The tangent of that thought led you back to reality, interrupting your hands as they tied off the gauze for your fingers to curl over his wrist instead. The absence of words spoke more.

It was a strange, heady sensation, to be filled with the sight of each other and watch as eyes fall to lips, a tacit desire blooming to have them touch, each to each.

He realized that you were lost in thought, not him, as your eyes glistened with tears.

“Arthur, if you hadn’t—if you  _had_ —“

You closed your eyes against the unthinkable end to that sentence. In the dark of your thoughts of loneliness and death, one of your teardrops fell, gently and silently—as snow did, and Arthur went wordless at the sight.

An urgent wave swept over him, lifting his large, calloused hands to tip your face back into the luminance of the fire. Unimaginable, how soft-hearted his inured hands became as they cupped your cheeks to swipe away your needless tears. His thumbs passed over the pores of your skin to efface your uncharacteristic sadness raptly, concerned with the sad brightness of your downcast gaze.

“Hey,” he shushed you gently, his voice softened by a tone he seldom used. “It weren’t a big deal.”

“I was irrational and you got hurt because of it. I put both our lives in danger.” You argued. “All of this is my fault.” Bitter resentment and shame dipped your chin low and Arthur raised it once more.  

“ _None_  of that was your fault.”    

 _I’d do it again and again. In a heartbeat. Don’t you know that?_ Those were the words he meant to say, though he dared not to. They were too soft for his gruff voice, too foolish in their candor. But also, being the kind of man who kept hidden what mattered most to him, a steadfast principle held him back. Their unuttered echoes rippled within him all the same, holding the clear beginnings of a confession, and he lost track of himself as a new fear dawned upon him in their wake.

He was stricken by the cold terror of losing something he would never have.

The truth confined itself, yet his eyes implored you, the roughness of his thumbs caressing over the softness of your tearful skin.

Nothing to be heard and everything to be seen, all that lay unspoken between you was said in another way—with his hands cradling your face lovingly, and yours still curled over his wrists, clinging to him. 

As you swayed in his grasp and in your despair, he ached for you. He sought to soothe the pain in your brow; the tips of his fingers trailing over your temple and the back of his knuckles following the curve of your cheekbones thoughtfully. You leaned into his reverent touch completely, and when the apples of your cheeks no longer gleamed with fresh tears, he was left with you and him and the open. Alone. Two forlorn souls holding one another while the stars flowered above.

The watery smile you gave him was true, and the feeling that fluttered within him was the same. It was not the first smile you graced him with, but it was the nearest. 

In his careful hands he dispelled your previous sorrows as he had hoped, and an overwhelming gratitude took its place. One he shared. As much as the encounter rattled you, it frightened him far more. How fast it all happened. The distant gunfire. Your screams. Coming across your startled horse on the road and racing through the thicket to find you.

His relief came after you were safe. After he had finished the last of the pack off with a clean shot to the head, he pulled you up from the ground and you splayed a bloody hand over his heart in disbelief. He covered it with his own to keep its place. While you were profusely grateful to him for coming after you, he shushed your frantic apologies and set off to find a place to camp before nightfall.

You had been quiet while following him the rest of the way, troublingly so while you gathered the driftwood along the pebbled shore for the fire.

Your smile began to wane in the bronze glow of the firelight, your expression fading as neither of you intended to let go of one another, this closeness. The endearingly soft expectancy in your eyes drooped somberly as you awaited his decision to pull away. He realized with dismay that you knew he would.

A threshold stood before him.

A lifetime of his mistakes, misfortunes, bad decisions and bad luck blurred past him in an instant like the pages of his journal. Deep down, he knew the ending and where his fate would ultimately lead him. And yet, those hardships shaped him into the man who knelt before you. 

An unfathomable sense of unworthiness washed over him at the fact that despite the route his life had taken…it lead him to you. In spite of everything he had done, he allowed himself to believe that perhaps his last chance of finding someplace safe with somebody good had yet to be squandered. The prospect of you sharing this dream loomed before him, and the more he looked, the more he  _wanted._  Senselessly and without abandon.

One final revelation begged its divulgence before this became a pleasant memory to add to the few. He had to find a way to disclose what you meant to him, and not with his meager words.

His thumbs trailed down, paused on your lips—

_Your life matters more to me than my own._

—and a man he would never be held his breath.

With a slow, dawning wonder, the seam of your mouth parted and beckoned him, the fan of your lashes lifting slow. All he wanted for you,  _of_  you, awakened a thirst for a goodness he would never possess, unfurling in his heart with the same forbiddance of a rose blooming in moonlight.

You blinked once and looked at him anew.

And this.

This was the reason why. This was the moment in time when he knew.

Arthur needed to pull away. He needed to end this before it began.

He was a fool when he bitterly convinced himself that Mary Linton was the type of woman he would never fall out of love with. He never prepared himself for the possibility that one day he would be less wishful of the past and more hopeful for a future that would never come to be. The consequences would cripple him if he was careless. It was better if this secret of himself was kept buried. In his dreams, his drawings, his journal, in all of the places where the unsung desires of his soul echoed.

Although, these truths….he found that they may hide in all except two places. In silence and in reflections.

The silence of fading twilight held it when he drew closer, his eyes unclosing, and the mirror of you held it as your graceful shadow moved to join his upon the Earth.

The tip of his nose brushed along yours.

And all was still.

Beneath the night blue, within the whispers of a breeze, his dreams called to him. The ones forgotten, too impractical to keep—however far in the dark of his sleep. A murmuring slinked through his thoughts, pleaded him to reach forth, aching for nothing be between. He listened, wavering as the leaves in the trees surrounding him did, and he leaned his brow against yours as a final restraint. Over and over again, the wish desperately returned to him each time he shunned it away. 

He clung to the last of his hesitations; his sensibilities begging him to turn away and never learn if your mouth was as sunshine warm and honeysuckle sweet as he imagined it to be.

The fleeting space between lessened, filled with the wild leaping of his heart thudding in his ear and the blurred sight of you until his eyes no longer wished to see. He soaked in the moment long enough to realize what he was about to do, what he was about to ruin.

Your name, it burned as he whispered it breathlessly. It was the cold wind that threw open a door long shut in his mind. Thought dead, what lay within the shadows merely slumbered; a heap of ash gray embers protecting a glowing heart, one that the merest breath may stir awake and fan aflame.

At the plea in his voice, your hands fell to his collarbone, seeking the fact of his pulse as they curved along his neck, shyly slipping beneath the buttons undone on his collar. 

Soft and divine, the glide of your fingertips found his chin and stilled, a helpless shudder leaving his lungs. You were lingering on his scar, acknowledging with an inquisitive stroke that he had earned it on his unimaginably harsh journey through life. A life lived beneath a merciless sky, yet had taken him down paths that strayed far from sunlight.

The delicate skip of your touch wandered warmly. You coaxed his bottom lip apart, and for an elusive instant, all of his doubts vanished, crumbling like shale and slipping away like sand when you looked at him in a way no one ever had. The caring tenderness you returned lifted the shadows of his doubts, eclipsed them with the luminous glow of your gaze. He believed, in that sliver of absolute peacefulness, that none of this unfolding intimacy had anything to do with worth. 

 _Only this once_ , he told himself. And at last, he relented.

Sharing your quiet sigh of elation, his brows softened, rose with his hopes, and the devotion swelling in his heart became a flood that rises. To be so near the thread of your pulse and the splendor of your eyes, to share your breath and breathe in the faint perfume of lavender enchanting your skin, it was all the closest to heaven he would ever be. Never before had he known such a nearness to another soul.  

Lips began to press—

 _No_ —

At the last second before delirium claimed him, he rested his forehead against yours like a man seeking respite. He took your hands, each in his own, and tucked them back into your lap as if to deny the truth before him. You had a wide look to your eyes—as if you had done something wrong—as he made the shattering choice to pull away from your warmth.

It was the last thing Arthur wanted to do.

Offering you this hope and to kiss you with all of the promises he wished to make was cruel and unfair of him. He knew better than to indulge this fantasy. For it was the same as gnawing on an old bone with only a trace of meat left; it would only leave him hungrier than before, like all illusions. Especially ones involving you. Dwelling on it gave him the same tender ache as pressing on a bruise.

It was best if the sensation of kissing you would remain known only to a dream. After all, what choice did he have? It was too late for him. But for you…

His voice returned to him in a whisper. “Just don’t go running off by yourself like that again, okay?”

_I don’t want to lose you more than I already will._

When all was said and done, you would find your way out from this life. Away from all of the robbing and killing and running. Away from him.

You nodded, tugging your earlobe self-consciously as you fixed your gaze to the ground.

“That  _scratch_  might scar, but it should be fine. Just keep it clean.” You mumbled before turning away in a rush.  

The intimacy that transpired was lost as you quickly rose to your feet and walked back to the campfire.

After a hard swallow to muster his composure and subdue his guilt, he rolled his sleeves past the neat knots of the gauze you nimbly tied. “Now, didn’t you say something about whiskey?”

The corner of your mouth quirked up at his attempt to lighten the mood, followed by a renewed sparkle in your eye from across the fire. After dinner and with a grin around the lip of the bottle, the rest of the evening passed by in a blur.

Arthur rarely spoke much of himself. That changed when he was alone with you. 

With you, he told stories he never shared with anyone. Not from a sense of shame or secrecy, but because you asked curious questions that required a deeper part of himself to answer; a part of himself left in the past. You unwittingly unearthed his stories from a time before he knew how to write the happenings of his life plainly for the sake of recollection in his journal. Events that were unimportant to him in the past, yet mattered the moment you smiled and laughed when he recalled them. 

He had darker stories, too, and you listened well, letting him find the right words, your expression full of empathy as he talked about his father and the conditions he grew up in. A lump formed in his throat when he reminisced about his mother, and he welcomed the touch you spared to his shoulder when he told you about his son. 

As the night continued on, his chest grew warm with something other than liquor as your arm aligned with his and your head rolled onto his shoulder contentedly.

You both looked to the sky, as dreamers often do, and together you admired the galaxy of stars above. Before those jeweled heavens of light, the embers of the fire danced through the eddy of smoke and moths to join the night. Arthur leaned back on the log with you curled up beside him, his jacket tucked underneath your chin. 

Your arm reached forth to point out familiar constellations, and you explained to him how the Greeks believed their gods cast images in the stars so that the memory of their people and their mythos would persist for time immemorial. Hercules and Pegasus, Andromeda, the Chained Woman, and Perseus, the Gorgon Slayer. You told him all of their stories, ending with Orion, the Hunter, with his belt of three stars that served as a guide to many heroes on their journey home. 

He followed your hand as it connected the imaginary lines between them all and he squinted at their obscurity. A natural wonderment quieted your voice as you observed the boundless magnificence of the sky. For a time, silence stretched. The wood from the fire crackled and you stayed at his side, gazing up above.

Before long, you began to maunder aimless thoughts aloud, signaling your descent into sleep. “I wonder if the stars know how fondly they are looked upon…” you yawned and Arthur watched the path the moonbeams made through the high branches. His inherent cynicism lay forgotten at your innocent rambling, for those words resonated within him the deepest.

He wondered the same as he looked back down to you.

“I’m sorry,” you laughed. “That was…” the fan of your lashes lowered with a smile. He was losing you and your unfinished conversation to exhaustion. “My train of thought seems to have hit a cow.” He withheld his laugh and smiled instead.

With your hand against his ribs and the soft of your cheek pressed over the beat of his heart, you dozed off and he began to follow. As his arms found their place around you, he looked up to a sky still blue despite the loss of light. Through a night so dark, fell a star. He made one wish upon it. To stay.

His final, drifting thoughts were of how the moon found her place in the stars, watching over all, oblivious to the light she lent, and how the wolves in the distance still yearned for her brightness.

He rested his head against your crown, filled his lungs with the memory of how you smelled of petals in the night breeze.

Arthur fell into the first untroubled sleep he had known in years.

His dreams were moonlit and of you, as always. In the dawn, he woke with the robins and found your fingers threaded through his. He loosened them. You hummed in your sleep as he tugged off your boots and tucked you into your frayed bedroll, unbuckling your gun belt before he did.

As the sun first came and all was bathed in pink light, he sat before the dying whispers of the fire, his journal in his lap as the mountain wind whistled through the pages.

The calm of the water soothed him with their cold, golden ripples between the pond lily leaves, but the image that caught his eye that morning and guided his pencil was not one from nature.

He drew your hand in his.

* * *

The sun has moved higher in the sky.

A ray of brightness warms your face as it slips between the cracks of your tent, interrupted briefly by the swoop of a bird’s wings, and you stir in the light.

Along the journey of his drawing, smudges of gray color Arthur’s hands as they have traveled over the page. A few details still remain. His eyes wander over his work, searching for the aspects he needs to add before he considers his portrayal of you thoroughly complete.

Through deep talks on a dark night, Arthur knows how perfectly the curve of your shoulder fits to his side, and he lightly scratches his pencil backwards and forwards to form a rounded effect. Inside a bed, inside a dream, he would trace the bare lines of your shoulders with his knuckles instead.

In the present, his pencil flicks replicate the ridges of the fabric of your nightshift down your arm, and he uses slight gaps to suggest the highlights of the translucent folds of the material. His shading carefully fades to nothing as he continues along.

The memory of your arms pressed against his, and the bend of your elbow as you leaned back to stargaze rests in the back of his mind and guides his hand, his attention deeply focused.

The bare skin of your collarbone glistens in the humidity, perspiration beading in the wells of your clavicle. He darkens the shallows that lead to the elegance of your neck, and he shadows the fragrant hollow of your throat where he knows the scent of lavender lays. The shell of your ear comes last before he reaches your face. The platonic press of it against his chest that night as you drifted to sleep is an idle thought he always holds on to.

That night by the lakeside, he memorized every detail of your face. How the moonlight left your softer. How the firelight left you warmer in the cup of his hands.

At the feather light brush of your lashes along his face, his heart had stilled. He traced the slope of your nose with his after, and you had closed your eyes.

No words captured the profoundness of that intimacy to him. He draws it instead—that softness of your eyelashes against your cheeks as you rest. The dreamlike way the light falls upon you. He draws, and draws, until one aspect of your visage remains. The one of most importance to Arthur, and the one he imagines to be the gentlest part of you.

The vulnerable, soft space between your lips where your breath ebbs and flows with sleep.

His familiarity comes not from the ghostly touch of your mouth against his—so soft, and so hesitant, he may have imagined it after he pulled away from you that night.  But rather, he knows your smile. One often rare in genuine nature, given the current predicament of the lifestyle you adopted.

The memory that prompts him to finish the drawing is of the first time you smiled at  _him_.

It was the time of spring when the lilacs were sweet and full of rain—the good kind that washed the bricks anew. As the gang settled in to the new camp, the warm showers the clouds spilled overhead were a welcome change from enduring the cold snow of the mountains for weeks on end.

Church bells rang as Arthur’s steps creaked off of the gunsmith’s porch and into the muddy main street of Valentine. He ran his thumb over the new snake carving on the pearl handle of his pistol, taking a moment to admire the craftsmanship before he tucked it away and looked up to wonder where you were.

You had offered to help him that morning on a supply run in town. The corner of his eyes had crinkled at your eagerness and Arthur agreed to bring Jack along to get him away from his parents’ arguing. Overall, it was an uneventful trip. He helped you load up the wagon with bales of hay and sacks of grain before you headed off to the store with a list Pearson gave you, insisting you would be able to handle everything yourself.

A peal of laughter drew his eyes to the churchyard, and he found you stooping down to meet little Jack Marston’s height in the damp grass. The boy presented you with a handful of flowers, giggling as he tucked a flimsy violet behind your ear. You accepted it graciously as Arthur approached. 

At the clink of his spurs, you looked up, the light of thankfulness shining in your eyes as you gingerly touched the bloom. Dandelion seeds floated through the air on a wish-bound journey, and the crescent moon of your smile as it faded demurely plucked his heartstrings.

You were—

Something he was not ready to admit to himself, not yet.

That bundle of violets Jack picked for you lays dry and withered in an embroidered handkerchief on your side table. He stares at them, the pencil in his hand stilled with the shock of completion.

Arthur came to a realization long ago when it came to you; admiring you from afar was like observing art in a museum.

Meant for the eyes, unspoken and at a distance, not the hands. Not to touch, or hold, or keep.

He closes the cover of his journal. Drawing you was a mistake. The leather strap ties and binds everything back inside and he returns to his stoic self, rolling his sleeves back down over the bite mark scars. He leaves all of his thoughts of you behind in your tent as he steps out and searches out Charles to accompany him for the day rather than face this. The thought of spending time with you no longer eases his uncertainties.

He does what he can to survive, always has, and he has to do what is best for you, as well.

And so, Arthur buries his feelings for you with the same metaphorical dirt he used for his mother, hoping it would make everything easier if he stayed far away.  

Inside, in that hidden heart of his, he knew the feelings he buried for you were only seeds.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> We hope you enjoyed your visit to the Sequoia National Forest with all of our great pining. Proceeds are appreciated in the form of kudos, comments, bookmarks, or any token you wish to give and will fund this writer's validation and passion to create more, as we do work hard here at the Department of the Interior Fanfiction. We hope your train of thought didn't hit a cow and rendered you thoughtless as we would love to hear back from you! Even a sentence! Thank you for reading <3


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